National Bellwether or Bavarian Exceptionalism?

Yesterday, one week before the German election, the Bavarian state election has returned the Christian Social Union (CSU) to full power with 101 seats (of 187) in the Munich Landtag. The Free Democratic Party (FDP), with which the CSU is in a coalition – like Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Berlin –, did not pass the 5% threshold for entering the Landtag.